Veteran bookseller David Thompson, 38, assistant manager of Murder by the Book in Houston, Tex., passed away suddenly on Monday, Sept. 13. Thompson, who’d been an employee of Murder by the Book for 20 years when his wife McKenna Jordan bought the bookstore in Jan. 2009, was also publisher of Busted Flush Press, which specialized in publishing mystery novels and anthologies, as well as reissuing out-of-print thrillers and crime fiction. Thompson launched Busted Flush Press in 2005.
Thompson’s bookselling career began at Murder by the Book, when he was hired in 1989 as a shelf stocker. He worked his way up to bookseller and became the store’s assistant manager about 10 years later. Thompson married Jordan, then the store manager, in 2008, four months before she purchased the store from its previous owner, Martha Farrington, who’d founded the mystery bookstore in 1980.
Thompson, together with Crimespree Magazine’s Jon Jordan, was the host for Bouchercon 2011, scheduled to be held Sept. 15-18, 2011 in St. Louis.
A memorial service has not been scheduled yet, and Jordan asks on the store’s website that no tributes be sent to the store “for now.”
